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“lost training contract conviction” – What a bummer. Maybe I’m accentuating the positive here, but at least you were offered one! Better to have loved and lost than.... and all that!“is zune pass legall” Yes. Can you spell? No.“i'm techno and you're not” – All right... don’t rub it in!“my tennager's pretending to be a boy on the internet” – Holy Cow! And I thought I had problems. I take it your ‘tennager’ is a girl.... otherwise?“legal practice course secret” – Go on then.... tell us what it is. Still, stable doors and horses spring to mind.“llb worth it” – Probably not.“is a llb worth it” – I refer you to my previous answer.“law stuff” You know, just any old ‘law’ ‘stuff’.“can a thief come in from roof?” I guess he can if he was suitably nimble. Or Spiderman.“law student love life” – Slow, usually. Often non-existent (despite their fervent claims to the contrary).“lawyer on a Dictaphone” – what is this, some kind of perverted menu?“do people still use Dictaphones” – Yes,…

I realise that the true hay-day of ‘the dummies’ series of books has been and gone several years ago now and I think it’s fairly common knowledge that the vast range of topics on which these books exist almost beggars belief. It should come as no surprise, then, that there is a genuine ‘Law School for Dummies’ – pitched at US law school. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before a UK edition of an equivalent title rears its head? I’m all for good preparation and self-help (up to a point) though I’ve never been a big believer in self-help books per se – perhaps because of their generally patronising approach which invariably promise the world and fall woefully short or the fact they tend to lead the reader on a helter-skelter trip into the bleeding obvious. I’m not quite sure who would actually buy Law School for Dummies: potential students, the interested lay person – if such persons exist – or desperate students looking for shortcuts to success?In the case of the latter category, so…

From BBC News 11th June 2009:A Spanish bakery accused of barbaric behaviour towards an illegal worker will face "the full weight of the law", the government has vowed.The statement comes amid shock over the case of a Bolivian worker whose arm was cut off in an accident at work. Bosses at the bakery in Valencia are accused of dumping him 100m (330 feet) from the hospital entrance and throwing the severed limb in a rubbish bin. A Spanish trade union has lodged a complaint against the bakery. The union - the Workers Commissions (CCOO) - claims that in the early hours of 28 May, the arm of Franns Rilles was severed in a kneading machine while he was working. It was allegedly dumped in a rubbish bin and only discovered by police the following day, by which time it was too late to reattach it. This one is a little tough to get your head around and the mystery is not helped by the fact that news reports do not make it clear whether the arm was (allegedly) discarded maliciously or …

From the Daily Mail 16/06/09:A disabled law student is suing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch for discrimination, claiming it made her work in a stockroom because her prosthetic arm didn't fit its public image. Riam Dean, 22, was just days into a part-time job at the U.S. firm's flagship London store when she says she was asked to leave the shop floor. She was born with her left forearm missing and has worn a prosthetic limb since she was three months old but insists she has never allowed her disability to get in her way.[Dean] was also given a uniform of jeans and a polo shirt, although the company handbook does state that sales associates can wear their own clothing as long as it is in 'Abercrombie style'. Miss Dean, ... normally wears long-sleeved tops to disguise the join between her upper arm and artificial limb, says she was told to buy a plain white cardigan to wear over her uniform. But matters came to a head a few days later. 'A worker from what they call …

From Paul Thurrott’s Short-takes of June 15th 2009:Like the specter from beyond the grave that it is, Opera has opined on Microsoft's Windows 7 "E" Editions proposal. Opera, you might recall, set off all this silliness when it complained about Windows/IE bundling to the EU. (Opera is also the only browser company that hasn't gained market share against IE in the past three years. Go figure*.) So how did Opera react to news that Microsoft would remove IE 8 from Windows 7 in Europe? With its usual grace, of course. "Microsoft is trying to set the remedy itself by stripping out IE," Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner said. "They are trying to replicate the remedy [from] the media player case, which we all know didn't work." Really? Two things about that. One, that remedy was the EU's remedy, not Microsoft's remedy. And I'd argue that it did work—by pointing out that government-controlled product feature wrangling isn't a good idea. That…

I stumbled across this howler the other day (to which I’ve made a couple of alterations) and couldn’t help being reminded of the strangely disturbing diagrams from the 19th century indicating the average damages awarded in respect of loss of limbs.For what it’s worth, I don’t have any ‘tats’ yet know without any doubt that my girlfriend would promptly leave me should I ever obtain one. Thank God she’s got such good sense.

Just before the exams started, I mentioned that I might release a revision-method type post. I so often make these promises of posts which never subsequently appear so thought I’d make good on my intentions for once. I realise the exam season is pretty much over for everyone now, but I guess it might be of interest to procrastinating students next year looking for inspiration or a boost of motivation. I’m not sure this post will provide either, but the revision method I outline just might be of interest.Way back during my A-levels, I discovered a method for revising which worked fairly well and which I’ve gone on to tweak over the past few years. I feel I’ve graduated to a revision system which works well for me, though I realise everyone is different. From personal experience, I think many students’ approach to revision is, to put it mildly, less than optimal, though I recognise that we all learn in different ways. Ultimately, though, your method needs to work well for you – and if …

Having broken the habitual grip that Google held over me, I’ve been trying out Bing on and off in the past week or so and the results are considerably better than I’d anticipated. Whatever you might feel about the credibility of Bing as a competitor to Google, though, Redmond’s new ad shows a level of humour creeping through that had previously been reserved for internal (or at least limited) audiences only. Long may it continue.Great stuff.

Yes, it’s finally finished and I can put the trauma of LL.M exams firmly behind me. My final exam (competition law) went fairly well with only one distinct curveball (I guess the cricket equivalent ‘googly’ would be more appropriate here) in the 3 questions I tackled. As per my plan, the desired questions in the desired format all came up on vertical restraints, abuse of a dominant position and refusals to supply.I was somewhat perturbed, though, to discover that I was going to be sitting my final exam at desk 13 (unlucky for some). I’m not a particularly superstitious person but I have to admit that it had a slightly unsettling effect on me, albeit for a few minutes. Perhaps exam halls should omit the number 13 when labelling desks, if only to appease the more superstitious candidates out there. For instance, hotels often avoid numbering a room ‘13’ and Formula One skip the number 13 when numbering the cars for the season, though there is a P13 grid slot of course. So I’ll be enjoyi…

Came across this gem via Digg last week which I found worryingly amusing. I’m putting my currently distorted sense of humour down to the stress and tedium that is LL.M revision. Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Michael. :-/

Michael is a practising lawyer and accomplished cynic from the UK. He’s been blogging since his student days and can’t quite bring himself to hang up his blogging gloves just yet (they’re fingerless gloves, obviously).
He loves fussing over trivialities, seeking comfort from repetitive activities, idly reminiscing and moaning about things.